notmovingpictures is the home of two podcasts, notmovingpictures and Ten For Tuesday as well as the zine Exercising Demons and the music project Stationary Nomads. Plus I get to write all kinds of stuff here which is always cool.

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Sunday, May 27, 2012

Next Time Just Kick Me And I'll Take The Clue

Saturday I did something that I haven't done in quite a few years, I washed my truck. If you want to get technical about it I washed my wife's car as well. Now don't take that the wrong way, it's not as if either vehicle has been neglected and were filthy eyesores. I have taken them to the car wash and done it there, although not very frequently. I'm referring to actually washing them by hand in our driveway which turned out to take more time than I initially thought it would. My wife's car was done fairly easily as it is a small four cylinder car (Dodge Caliber) however my big pickup (GMC extended cab) proved to be more difficult.

At one point I had a step ladder out so that I could reach every place on it. If felt good to be out in the sun sweating, doing something somewhat physical, I just wish my son had come outside so that I could have soaked him down, purely accidentally of course. Once I finished I came inside for some well deserved lunch before playing a few rounds of Super Mario Brothers with my son and then followed that with a quick shower. Saying my goodbyes I dashed off to work where I thankfully had been given six hours of overtime. Hey, we need the money, even more so since we are trying to take a trip to the beach. The closest one is in Galveston, Tx which is a mere nine hour drive from Tulsa. Hopefully gas prices won't go up too much.

Work consisted of QCing medical records (kind of a quality check if you will) and while doing so I started noticing that my hands were starting to cramp. As I sat in front of the computer I also started noticing that my shoulders were aching a bit too. Still, for some unknown reason I took nothing for the pain and instead chose to tough it out. I can't really explain why. Later I had to get some cover sheets and bent over to retrieve them and as I stood up while counting them I banged my head on one of the shelves. Not too hard but still enough that I immediately started feeling the effects of it.
At this point I gave in and took some ibuprofen. Apparently it takes getting hit in the head for me to decide that there's no sense in making things more difficult than they need to be.

I'm not sure if it was stubbornness or machismo or what but it took that many hints for me to get it. Maybe it's just part of being a man. We know that we can do something that will make us feel better and still we resist, insisting that we can "tough it out." Regardless, work was productive and the money will be well used and just in time. I just wish after returning home that my son hadn't backhanded me in the testicles while I was trying to brush his teeth. It was the capper on a tiring, achy, painful day, a capper that I could have done without.

Written and Published by Don Leach.
May not be used without permission from the author.